Page:To-morrow Morning (1927).pdf/107

 glass until the tip of his nose was white. Suppose she never came? His heart lurched. The world was empty except for a watching child.

Then under the are light he saw her, her long crêpe veil blowing in the snowy wind, hurrying home to him, and the reassurance of her presence poured through all his body.

Kate had been out delivering some score cards she had painted for Mrs. Wells' valentine heart party. She was working hard to make money. The most difficult thing was to tell people she would like to take orders for portraits, dinner cards, anything "hand painted." She would plan an easy, graceful speech, she could hear herself saying it, just the opportunity would come—and time after time she let it slip past.

She would lie awake at night in a panic that made her heart beat fast, drenched her with terror. What if she couldn't get anything more to do? What if she couldn't get along on the little bit of money left from the Thunder Bird? Jodie, who slept in the small room opening out of hers, woke up sometimes to hear his mother crying in the dark, and lay still, not daring to move. Why should grown-up people ever cry? And what can a boy do about it, even a boy who is going to be six his next birthday?

But Kate's terror was always gone in the morning. Mornings when snowy branches were blazing white traceries on the blue; bright blowing mornings tossing red maple buds against the sky; even mornings of mist-